Louis Maistros, New OrleansMember Since May 2011Artist Statement Louis Maistros is a longtime resident of the New Orleans 8th Ward neighborhood. A former forklift operator and self-taught writer, artist, photographer and musician with no formal training, his work has appeared in publications such as the New Orleans Times-Picayune and the Baltimore City Paper.

His New Orleans historical novel, The Sound of Building Coffins, was published by The Toby Press in March of 2009 and is currently in its third printing. It was nominated for an SIBA Award and has garnered rave reviews from publications such as The New Orleans Times-Picayune, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The St. Petersburg Times, Library Journal, Publisher's Weekly, The Roanoke Times, Kirkus Review, The Times of Acadiana, The Anniston Star, The Alabama Press-Register and Baltimore Magazine among others. It has also garnered endorsements from respected authors such as Peter Straub, Donald Harington and Poppy Z. Brite.

Since the release of The Sound of Building Coffins, Maistros has been a featured speaker at the Tennessee Williams Festival, the Louisiana Book Festival, the Shreveport Book Festival and Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island for "The Katrina, Katrina Project."

He is mildly self-conscious about the fact that he shares a birthday with Lee Harvey Oswald, and is currently working out a conspiracy theory about that. That conspiracy theory is the driving force behind his next novel, Holy Meaux, which he is currently at work on.

When he is not writing, he is compulsively taking pictures of his beloved home city of New Orleans. His striking and unusual images are at times touching, funny, tragic, spiritual and thought provoking.